Saturday, March 6, 2010

Elebits (Wii) Review

Two reviews in one day are planned for this Saturday. The first is a classic review from way back in early 2006. It's for Elebits, a game that saw an unconventional DS sequel. How's the original fare? Let's jump in and find out.

An Elebit of Fun

Konami steps up to the Wii plate to dish out their premier title for Nintendo's next gen piece of hardware. Their first title? The quirky Elebits. Elebits are small, cute, and sometimes dangerous critters that power all of the world's devices. Unfortunately for the world, the Elebits have begun to act rashly after an electric storm and now a young boy (trust me, it's a boy), Kai goes off with his father's Capture Gun to retrieve all of the crazed Elebits.

Elebits makes use of the nunchuk control style in an FPS format. You use the analog stick to move around and the C and Z buttons on the nunchuk to squat and to rise on your toes. The remote functions as your pointer which you use to aim and then press A to grab onto objects or capture various Elebits in the game world. Each stage takes place in a different locale starting off as small as Kai's room to as expansive as an amusement park. By capturing Elebits your wattage increases allowing you to turn on appliances. These appliances hide power Elebits which strengthens your Capture Gun to pick up larger objects and furniture. In order to clear a stage you'll need to gather enough watts. Later levels will give you conditions on clearing such as making as little loud noises as possible to not breaking a lot of objects in a stage. Also in each stage are items such as the homing laser that targets nearby Elebits, a shield which protects you in later levels from rampant Elebits, and a noise reducer that cancels out loud sounds temporarily. These all can greatly aid you while you toss around furniture searching for hidden Elebits.

A red elebit lounging around on the job.

Boss battles help break up the action. These require you to dodge attacks while using the Capture Gun to take them down. If you get attacked either in a boss battle or in any level, your gun's durability will lower. If it gets down to zero, it's game over for you.

If the twenty five stage plus story mode isn't enough to whet your appetite, Elebits includes an edit mode which enables you to create your own levels. You can place furniture, hide Elebits under objects, set the wattage goal, the time limit, and much more. If that isn't enough you can trade and get levels from other Wii gamers on your friends' list. This greatly opens up the replay value and is a welcomed treat. Additionally a multiplayer mode allows up to four players to see who can capture the most watts. It can get hectic, but it's mostly fun in short bursts.

First we repossess you car...

Some problems I had with Elebits included doors sometimes not opening when I turned the Wii remote to turn their knobs. I'd have to fiddle with the game to allow me to open the door. Also, the environments can be quite claustrophobic especially with all of the objects and furniture in the way. Finding Elebits in these areas and grabbing the right objects to move can become a challenging mess. Finally in later levels the framerate can drop when a lot of action takes place. This can occur even in earlier levels when there's a lot going on.

And then we repossess your house!

Ultimately, Elebits is one of those games that awesomely uses the Wii remote. It's fun to play or just throw objects across the room, there's a lot of depth to the game, unlockables to be had, and even as I've had this since launch I'm continuing to come back to this game. If some of the slowdown and framerate issues were taken care of this game might have been even more soild than in its current form. Here's hoping for a sequel at the very least.